Thoughts on Money

But consumption smoothing pays homage to an existential reality: Life itself is the ultimate scarce asset. The future is unknowable, and religiously maintaining a double-digit savings rate through the worst squalls of life is not of the utmost importance.

I have great control of my money when I am earning it. I have zero control of my money when I am not.

Neither he nor the others feel that the hunched shoulders and housing insecurity of their youth were good for their art. The “La Bohème” portrait of impoverished painters and poets was after all a description, not a prescription. “And at least they could afford the garret,” Jacobs-Jenkins says. “In New York, forget it.”

“conventional budgeting methods rely on restriction, discipline, and perfectionism in a way that doesn’t work for people. They ignore an important truth about money: it’s meant to be spent.”